Testosterone Protects Against COVID-19

We hope all of you are staying safe during
this crazy COVID pandemic!

Many patients have reached out in response to
Dr. Fauci’s recent comment during the daily briefings regarding the role of
hormones in your body’s defense against COVID-19. We thought it would be helpful to
create this post to help answer some of your questions and to give you and your
loved ones a good resource.

So, we’ve all heard that young people and
women have far better outcomes than older patients and men when it comes to
COVID-19. Recently Dr. Fauci commented
during the daily briefings that he believed this was due to the protective
effects of hormones and how they boost the immune system. Testosterone helps regulate the
body’s immune system and keeps it in check, preventing the “cytokine storm”
that leads to pneumonia that is the main cause of COVID-19 deaths.

Hormones are more optimal in younger
people. And statistically, more women
seek hormone replacement therapy than men. As a result, women’s hormone levels
seem to be protective, giving them better outcomes than men their age who have
not been optimizing their hormone levels.

A
study from a German hospital of 45 COVID-19 patients showed that testosterone
plays a key role in their outcomes. Their findings showed
men with a lower testosterone level than optimal are at a far greater risk of
dying from COVID-19 than men with optimal levels.

While low levels of
testosterone can not control the immune response in men, the study found that
in female COVID-19 patients, higher testosterone levels were linked to a more
significant inflammatory response.

Professor Gülsah Gabriel
from the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg, who was
involved in the research, told MailOnline: ‘The majority of male COVID-19
patients had low testosterone levels.

‘Of those male COVID-19
patients who died, the majority also had low testosterone levels.

‘Thus, low testosterone levels in men seem to be a risk factor for severe and even fatal disease outcomes in men upon infection with so-called “cytokine inducing” respiratory viruses.’

SARS-CoV-2 trigger’s the human body into producing vast amounts of cytokines, chemicals that flood to the site of infection and begin fighting the pathogen. They can also signal to the body to send more immune cells to mount a defense against a foreign invader.

It is a key part of
healing in humans but a common issue for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 is
their immune system responds too aggressively.

This can lead to this
process getting out of control as it tries to defeat the invading pathogen. It
leads to an enormous immune response called a cytokine storm.

This is a
hyperinflammatory condition itself and can lead to severe lung damage, acute
respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and death.

Ali Daneshkhah, a
postdoctoral research fellow at Northwestern University who was not involved in
the study, explains: ‘This is what seems to kill a majority of COVID-19
patients, not the destruction of the lungs by the virus itself. It is the
complications from the misdirected fire from the immune system.’

Professor Gabriel adds:
‘It seems that testosterone has a dampening impact on the virus-induced
cytokine storm, which finally leads to death in both cohorts.

‘Men with normal
testosterone levels do not present a cytokine storm and thus are more likely to
survive.’

While
hormones are not a cure, they
certainly seem to be protective for COVID-19 as well as many other medical
problems.

We
do want our community to know that we are open and able to address your
questions and needs regarding hormones and general wellness at this time. Telemedicine is also available to ensure the
safety and comfort of our clients. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. We are
all in this together and look forward to getting through this together.

Nashville Location

A message from Dr. Ibrahim

With COVID-19 circulating across the US, Biltmore Restorative Medicine, as a medical facility, is committed to ultimate cleanliness and sanitation. We have taken every measure to ensure we remain sanitary and we take every precaution for the health and safety of our patients.

We remain open and fully operational during this time with adjusted hours:
Monday – Thursday: 9am – 4pm
Friday: 9am – 12pm